A microscopic gem, each one. Happy-inducing music.

orpheus wrote:

A microscopic gem, each one. Happy-inducing music.

Scarlatti is one Baroque composer whose keyboard music consistently sounds good on modern piano to my ears. It;s as if he was imagining an instrument w/ greater flexibility of dynamics than existed in his day.

Just listened to this:



Fantastic stuff. My picks from the album...

The force of Morrissey is strong in young Lekman.

Shrunk wrote:

orpheus wrote:

A microscopic gem, each one. Happy-inducing music.

Scarlatti is one Baroque composer whose keyboard music consistently sounds good on modern piano to my ears. It;s as if he was imagining an instrument w/ greater flexibility of dynamics than existed in his day.

And how! Have you heard Zacharias's performance? It's just wonderful. A great sense of touch, and really imaginative playing.

Edit to add: When I was on the conducting staff of the NYPhil one of the concerts I covered was with Zacharias conducting and playing from the keyboard: Mozart K.456 and two Haydn symphonies (I forget which ones). Very detailed, energetic, glittering music-making. I didn't have much contact with him - it was a busy few days, but he seemed like a nice guy. Also, he was quite open to feedback and suggestions, which isn't true of everyone.


[/name dropping]

2nd Edit: just found this. Haven't watched it yet, but looks promising:

A lot of that Scarletti stuff sounds like that tune Hannibal Lecter was listening to in his cell when he escaped. I don't think it was Scarletti he was listening to, but the influence is there.

Ah, that was JS Bach's "Goldberg" Variations that Lecter was listening to. One of the greatest works in any style for any instrument by anyone ever — period.

It's an odd coincidence that Bach and Scarlatti had almost exactly the same dates: Bach 1685-1750; Scarlatti 1685-1759. (Also a neat coincidence that JS Bach was the father of at least several important composers, and Domenico Scarlatti was the son of an important composer (Alessandro).

I don't know that there was an influence at work here. The "Goldbergs" were 1741, so chronologically it's certainly possible that one composer influenced the other. On the other hand, Scarlatti (Italian) spent most of his time in Spain & Portugal, while Bach had spent most (all?) of his life in Germany and by that time was well-ensconced in Leipzig. Offhand, I don't know if they even knew of one another (though I'm far from an expert on either one).

Stylistically, there are certainly similarities. However, Bach's "Goldberg" are a high point of the most complex Baroque counterpoint (many melody lines intertwining). Scarlatti, on the other hand, was beginning to write in the lighter, simpler style that would become Early Classicism (with fewer and simpler melodies accompanied by chords). I think one can hear that in a lot of his keyboard sonatas.

Anyway, I'm fairly sure Lecter was listening to Glenn Gould's 1955 recording of the Bach - the recording that made Gould famous. He recorded it again in 1981 — unusual for Gould, as he rarely re-recorded anything. (Quite spookily, the two recordings are bookends of a sort, since shortly after the latter one, Gould died of a massive stroke at age 50.) The two versions are like night and day. Both stunning, but totally different interpretations. The 1981 recording has long been a desert island disc for me. I wrote about it here, with a link to a video of Gould in the studio recording the 1981 disc. It's the full performance, and oh man is it worthwhile:

orph wrote: J.S. Bach's The "Goldberg" Variations as recorded by Glenn Gould in 1981. (The piece itself begins at 6:20 if you want to skip the introduction - but the intro is worthwhile. If you haven't seen/heard this before, set aside an hour and prepare to be astonished. Trust me on this; your life will be better because of it. I don't say that lightly.)

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/fun-g ... l#p1639657

orpheus wrote:...When I was on the conducting staff of the NYPhil one of the concerts I covered was with Zacharias conducting and playing from the keyboard: Mozart K.456 and two Haydn symphonies (I forget which ones)....

They all sound the same anyway!

THWOTH wrote:

orpheus wrote:...When I was on the conducting staff of the NYPhil one of the concerts I covered was with Zacharias conducting and playing from the keyboard: Mozart K.456 and two Haydn symphonies (I forget which ones)....

They all sound the same anyway!

True story: a colleague and I were surprised to find we both have the same recurring nightmare while asleep on flights to guest conducting gigs: arriving for the first rehearsal and realizing that we'd studied the wrong Haydn symphony.

But I bet you can busk that shit in your sleep though! Loud bit. Quiet bit. Loud bit. Quiet bit. Crescendo. Diminuendo. Repeat... I, V, I, V, I, V, V, I .... Like Mozart on Mogadon, and without the tunes.

You'll have guessed I'm not a fan.

THWOTH wrote::lol: But I bet you can busk that shit in your sleep though! Loud bit. Quiet bit. Loud bit. Quiet bit. Crescendo. Diminuendo. Repeat... I, V, I, V, I, V, V, I ....

don't let anyone know it's that easy.

Like Mozart on Mogadon,...

I totally disagree. If anything, Haydn is much more surprising. I can open any score of his to a random page and I'll think, "what the hell was he smoking when he wrote this?!"

...and without the tunes.

Now I think you have something there, and it's a really interesting point. Mozart's music tends to sound like it's written for the human voice - even his instrumental melodies are shaped like vocal lines. Haydn, on the other hand, does seems less concerned with tunes; you're right. But his invention often has to do with being a sort of compositional badass sleight-of-hand artist: with total ease, he mixes up the syntax of the phrases in surprising and cool ways: "This way the first time. This way - HA! - no, that way - the second time. Look over there. Third time abbreviate." (Incidentally, that's what makes studying the wrong Haydn symphony a scary thought: they're not cookie-cutter; they're not predictable. What could be a four-bar phrase might just as easily turn out to be five bars, or three-and-a-half. One doesn't want to be caught out by that!)

But I don't always see the comparative lack of tunes as a deficiency in Haydn's music; he was just working a different territory. But yeah, looking for Mozartean tunes in his music ain't a profitable enterprise.

You'll have guessed I'm not a fan.

Where would the fun be if everyone were a fan of everything? Long live the standing ovations and the thrown tomatoes!




Edit: adding stuff about music

Dark doomy jazs...

FKA Twigs - LP I


Sonically adventurous de-constructed R&B.

Full Album: Youtube Playlist

hippy space drug music. Great background muzak when marking books!

I went to an Ozrics gig once. The had the smoke machine so much you couldn't even see the stage, I still don't know to this day what they look like!

BlackBart wrote:I went to an Ozrics gig once. The had the smoke machine so much you couldn't even see the stage, I still don't know to this day what they look like!